


homesick

by callmefairyofthesea



Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [1]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Long-Distance Relationship, Slow Burn, Team as Family, Unrequited Love, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmefairyofthesea/pseuds/callmefairyofthesea
Summary: The unrequited love story of season five. Long-distance calls and continent hopping. Gar calmly pursues a relationship with Raven.Set in the same universe as "no man is an island."
Relationships: Beast Boy/Raven, Garfield Logan/Raven
Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185842
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	homesick

**Author's Note:**

> This story was mainly an excuse to write witty banter. Also, it helped me figure out how exactly Gar moves on from "no man is an island," when he *knows* that he ends up with Raven, but he *knows* that’s a long time away.

Raven flinches at the buzz of her communicator against her hip, panic welling low in the hollow of her chest because this could be another reassignment, another Titan missing, another mission extended. After months of sleeping in youth hostels and woods at the edge of civilization, it’s anyone’s guess. She has spent too long trying to recruit heroes who want nothing to do with them, not when the Brotherhood is involved, and she is tired. She wants to sleep. To wake up one morning to the glow of sun on the edge of the ocean, gold filtering through purple curtains, to wake up in her home. How long has it been since she’s had the time, the supplies, the luxury to drink tea? Three months? Four?

“Raven,” she says sharply, flipping her communicator up to eye level and leaning against the cold glass window’s shadow of late evening. _Please let it be nothing._

“ _Hey_ ,” says a cracked, familiar voice. Gar’s face is haggard, his hair longer than she has ever seen it. Stubble dots his cheeks, and she can’t remember the last time they talked. Six weeks? Longer?

“What’s the date?” Is she supposed to be in Paris already?

Slowly, he blinks at her, as if waking from a dream. “ _I don’t—I don’t know?_ ” He yawns, and she can see the bruises that race down his jawline, the scabs on his cheekbone. “ _January, I think._ ”

Her hand slackens on the communicator, nearly dropping it. “I thought it was early December.”

He chuckles weakly. “ _Sorry, I’m in the Amazon right now. Not a lot of calendars around here. Or people._ ”

She raises an eyebrow. “No?”

He laughs again, more genuinely this time, and she feels time turn on its head with nostalgia. She misses him. Their family.

“ _Nah, just you, Raven. Thanks for picking up. Wasn’t sure you would._ ”

“I always pick up.” It could have been an emergency, a reassignment, a mission briefing, someone missing, someone dead.

His lips curl happily. “ _Guessing you haven’t seen Cy since the new updates went out. He added a tag and color code system. Red is the emergency color, and then there’s blue for chatting—which is what I’m using now, wasn’t sure if you’d want to chat with me—and green for reassignment and—I think it’s been three weeks? Saw him on the east coast, anyway. He’s been trying to get around to everyone, must’ve missed you. Where are you, anyway?_ ”

She lowers her hood, relaxing into the sound of his voice. Familiar. Something to distract her from the incessant pit in her stomach that keeps telling her the next call will be the last one. It is nice to have someone from home here, even if they are continents apart.

“Oslo, Norway,” she says. “Expensive, but Robin’s covering me.”

As he leans into the screen, his eyes light up. “ _Norway! I haven’t been! Think I should put it on my bucket list? I’ve always wanted to go on a fjord tour, see the Northern lights, the whole shebang. I keep telling Cy that I was a Viking in a past life, but—_ ”

She shakes her head sharply, cutting him off. “You’re a new soul.”

Gar’s lips go pursed, like he’s swallowed a lemon. “ _Excuse you. I have lived a thousand lifetimes_.”

“Is that right.”

“ _I have seen the apocalypse up close. I have survived the era of Brother Blood and seen the fall of Slade. I have fought in more wars than you can imagine. I was around for the invention of New-fu and the rise of Mother Mae-Eye—_ ” His theatrical expression falters at the smirk on her face, the small snorts that slips through her nose. “ _Yeah, okay. So maybe I_ am _a young soul, is that a bad thing?_ ”

Raven leans her cheek on her palm as she gazes through the tiny screen, not sure why her chest is burning with something warm. “I said new, not young. There’s a difference.”

He grins, canines showing. “ _I bet I’m both. What are you?_ ”

“New.” She says it shortly. Trigon made her special eighteen years ago. Exhaling shakily, she readjusts her legs on the hotel bed. “Look, Beast Boy, what do you need?” The distraction is nice, but she can’t afford the luxury of small talk when she is supposed to be on an assignment. The Nordish news clippings of Madame Rouge glare at her from the corner of the bed.

“ _Need?_ ” Confusion crosses his eyes.

“Why did you call?” Her voice is too curt. She can feel it in the way his lips crease into a small frown.

“ _I—I just wanted to talk_.” His eyebrows slash down. Frustration. “ _I was homesick. Thought you might be too. Cy said no one’s talked to you in weeks, ‘cept Robin when he’s giving you mission briefs. Talking is what friends do, right? Well,_ sorry _, I’ll just get back to trampling through the jungle, didn’t mean to bother you, I’ll just be on my merry way, good_ —”

“No,” she says, before he can finish. A wave of remorse slaps her in the face. “I’m…sorry.”

His eyebrows quirk upward. And then he smiles, a soft crescent moon beneath hot sunlight and jungle green, and she is glad that he is not one to hold grudges. “ _Well, alright then. How are you holding up?_ ”

“I’m…fine.”

“ _Did they update the Merriam-Webster dictionary while I was in the Amazon? You don’t sound fine_ ,” he says pointedly, rubbing the sweaty stitches that pucker his temple, and she hates how good he is at this. The way he always corners her when she is exhausted, the way he pries her open like a clam.

“Tired, then.” she says, grimacing. “I miss my tea.”

“ _I bet you do. But you’re in fancy town right now. I’m sure they have it everywhere._ ”

“It’s a luxury cost. Non-essential.”

“ _Well, screw Robin’s budget. Get yourself some chamomile or peppermint or whatever the hell you’re drinking these days. We’ve been tracking down heroes for nine months, how long has it been since you showered?_ ”

She blinks once. Surprised. “I’m in a hotel right now, Beast Boy. This is the height of luxury.”

His nose wrinkles distastefully. “ _How about I buy you some tea next time we’re in the same country? My inheritance finally came through last month, after Galtry backed down. I could put it to some good use_.”

“You are not buying me tea with your family funds,” she says flatly.

“ _It’s_ my _money, Rae. Try and stop me._ ” He winks lazily at the screen, and she feels her cheeks burn. “ _Anyway, it’ll be nice. We haven’t seen each other in ages_.”

“Oh, yes,” she says drily, because she does not like the heat in her face, or the twist in her stomach, and Gar is too good with her buttons. The ones she does not want pressed. “The Atlantic Ocean isn’t a boundary, and I’ll meet you for breakfast tomorrow at eight. Central.”

Gar’s lips twitch. “ _Not funny. I’m serious_.”

“Of course you are. And tomorrow you’ll seduce me with earl gray, and we’ll run off into the sunset on white horses.” She waves her fingers dismissively. “Where the Brotherhood of Evil will never find us, and we’ll marry and have nine children in the mountains of Switzerland.”

Easier to roll into sarcasm. Easier to dismiss it now.

“ _Why would you need two white horses when you have me?_ ” he says in an offended voice.

“Aesthetic,” she deadpans.

But he grins, and she is uneasy. Too familiar. Too intimate. Her hands static with magic. “ _Well, we’re all reconvening in Paris in February. Maybe the city of love will sway you to my favor._ ”

She scoffs, hating the sharp pang of her gut, the instinctive need to push him away. “Goodnight, Beast Boy.”

His smile drops at the dismissal. “ _Goodnight, Raven_.”

The communicator clicks shut. Staring out the window at nighttime neon lights and snow flurries, she sighs. She thinks _Goodnight, Gar,_ because she won’t risk his name online, not when the Brotherhood is too close to hacking into their private line, not when he might take it the wrong way, not when she is not ready.

 _Ready for what?_ a small voice inside her wonders.

She flattens it.

And then slips on her winter cloak and grabs a wad of cash to buy some fucking Starbucks.

* * *

She’s in Germany when she finally updates her comm and beeps Gar less than twenty-four hours later, nostalgic for his voice. Too weak to scroll past his name when it flickers across the screen below Aqualad and above Bumblebee. She glances at the closed door, the bed cot that Vic rolled up this morning, and smiles. For the first time in weeks, her shoulders start to slip down, her neck to unknot.

“ _Raven?_ ” The video feed is a scratchy black, but the audio is working at least. She fiddles with the dials.

“What’s wrong with your visual?”

He groans loudly. “ _I broke it, okay? Got into a scrap with Cheshire last week, and she was going for the communicator. Cy and Robin are gonna tear into me next time I see them, but at least it’s not completely broken, you know?_ Ugh _, you know what? You, me, and Star. Let’s start a west branch of the Titans_.”

She feels herself smiling; the muscles are stiff from disuse. “Cyborg will still find you.”

“ _Well, with that attitude_.” A high-pitched giggle filters through the static. “ _I see you’ve updated your tag system_.”

“Ran into each other. I’d let him say hi, but he’s getting us take-out.”

“ _Are you_ serious _? I haven’t had a team-up mission in ages. Starting to think I’ll go crazy talking to plants_.”

“It’s just for a day. We’re getting reassigned tomorrow.”

“ _Still get to see him, though. Still get to talk and catch up and do the whole in-person thing. I’d give literally anything_.”

“I thought you were hiding from him.”

The joke is not enough to completely dull the sharp edge of his jealousy, but it is enough to make him snort. Enough to pull him away from the precipice of remembering last year, before. “ _He doesn’t know where I am, and I’m trusting you not to rat me out._ ”

“And where is that?”

A long pause. “ _Africa. Upper Lamumba_.”

Raven’s stomach drops. “I’ll get a reassignment near you.” It is a stupid thing to promise. When the Titans are already spread thin, when she and Vic in Berlin for a day is a small miracle, when there is no way Robin will let her go, not if Gar is already there.

“ _Um_ ,” he says slowly, “ _I appreciate the offer, but I’m good. It’s not near the waterfall where—hey! Did you say Berlin? I haven’t been there in years. My German is getting rusty, wie geht’s?_ ”

But she frowns. “Are you sure—?”

 _“—you mind if I stay on ‘til Cy gets back? I want to see if we can meet up to get my comm fixed._ ”

She leans against the dirty wall and stares at the ceiling, where water stains are heaving with new rain. After five years, she knows the easy ways he distracts. “Okay.”

“ _Man, this is practically a family reunion. All we need is Star and Robin and we’ll have a whole—actually, have you talked to her lately? I haven’t seen her since Russia_.”

“She wanted a break from field work after Red Star,” says Raven, pulling her hood up as one of the hostel residents walks past her.

“ _Oh_.”

She hums, knowing there are not better words. But even in the silence of remembrance, she feels warm. Closer to happy than she has felt in a long time. “I bought tea last week.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I went over budget and got a London fog at a Starbucks in Oslo.”

“ _Ha!_ ” he laughs almost too quickly, skipping over the things left unsaid. “ _How was it?_ ”

“Heaven incarnate. Nectar of the gods.”

“ _We’ve probably been living off rations and bottled water too long, huh. Robin say anything?_ ”

“That you’re a bad influence.”

“ _That is a badge of honor I will wear with pride. You didn’t have to go over budget, though._ ”

“And where else am I getting the funds to buy name brand caffeine?”

“ _Me_.”

The moments hiccups over itself, and Raven swallows past the heavy thud of her heart in her throat. “I don’t need you to buy me nonessentials with your inheritance.”

“ _I want to_.” Usually, he doesn’t know when to stop talking. Usually, his voice rambles and stumbles into extra words, an endless stream of consciousness that he tends to fall into when missions force him off his ADHD meds. Not this time. Not now.

She can feel his attention burning her. “You should save for your online classes.”

“ _Oh, come on, Raven. I signed up for two classes in August, and I don’t think I passed either of them. You know the last time I had Internet and a laptop?_ ”

“Next semester—”

“ _Come on. You and me. Paris. We’ll find some sort of cute patisserie with ethical coffee bean practices_.”

“Then I’m buying,” she says, point-blank.

His voice goes quiet, but she hears the hitch in his breath and thinks she has made a mistake.

“ _It’s a date_.”

Except it’s not—

 _Thump_.

“Who you talking to?”

Raven looks up, mouth half-open from wanting to correct Gar because tea at a café is what friends do, and friends is all she knows how to be. Vic stands beneath the doorframe with a take-out bag hanging from one elbow, head tilted curiously, and she can only hold up her communicator and sigh. Her stomach rumbles at the smell of stir-fry, but it’s going to be a long time before they eat. She knows what they are like together, how long they love to talk.

“Beast Boy. He’s in Upper Lamumba right now.”

“ _Fuck_ that, I’m getting reassigned—”

“ _Raven, you promised._ ”

She feels herself tuning out. Her chest fluttering with that panicky feeling again because even if she is not listening, even though she likes to hear them talk, she is replaying those three words over in her head, turning them on their sides, bending them inside out. The small voice inside her wonders, again, why she won’t let herself have good things, but Gar—

—wonderful, laughing, chipper Gar—

—is too fast for her. Too fast for her to fall slow and steady.

* * *

“ _Wish we’d gotten to hang out longer in Arizona_.”

Raven throws her head back, toward the floor, and tries to remember what time it is. What country. “I spent the entire day surrounded by chickens. No thanks.”

“ _Cy let me drive his car_.”

“You demolished it.”

“ _He’s rebuilt it so many times now that it’s not as big of a deal as it used to be_.”

“You’ve never helped him rebuild it.”

“ _Ha_.”

They listen to each other breathe. Gar’s video feed is fixed, dark skies and long plains, but they are both too tired to do anything but lay on their backs, continents apart, and stare at stars and ceilings.

* * *

“ _We’re supposed to be back at the Tower at the end of February. It’s not Paris, but I thought…maybe…_ ”

There it is again. The sour note that ruins all their late-night calls, the quiet nudge of something adjacent to friendship, and she is still new to feeling. Still new to bending her control sideways, just long enough to laugh, loudly, when he whispers another joke into the softness of two am.

She says, “Maybe.”

“ _Where are you right now?_ ”

“France.”

“ _You’re_ kidding _me. Paris?_ ”

“Thirty minutes out,” she confesses, and she sits on the windowsill of this tiny rental house, flipping through newspaper clippings of old zoos. “Thinking about learning French for Mallah.”

“ _I could teach you_.”

“You know French?”

“ _Grew up in Upper Lamumba. Lot of French colonies. And then once I joined the Doom Patrol, Rita picked it up. Something about a movie role_.”

“I saw some of your old Space Trek episodes on the hotel TV.”

“ _Oh,_ god _._ ”

“Impressive special effects on the dinosaur.”

“ _Shut up. I did all of my own shapeshifting. No stunt doubles, no Photoshop, no CGI—_ ”

“—no puppets, no animatronics, no green screen. I know.”

He has a nervous giggle, and it flutters into her stomach, and she can’t focus on the words beneath her fingers, the dates, the French vowels that blur together. “ _Sorry. I guess I talk about it a lot._ ”

“Impressively bad reviews for a show with only twelve episodes.”

“ _Eh, probably a good thing we didn’t get renewed. Child actors tend to have a lot of problems when they grow up_.”

She snorts softly because what are _problems_ if not fighting crime from the tender age of eight. “Good thing you shifted careers then.”

“ _Superheroes never have trauma_ ,” he says wisely. “ _Or PTSD or addiction or_ —”

“—tragic backstories?”

“ _Exactly_.”

Except there is something off-kilter in their easy back-and-forth, something that Raven does not have the words for. A quiet trepidation. It has been building for months, their dynamic tilted from tense tenterhooks of two people who do not quite know how to relate. Tilted to tumbling down.

Into where, she does not know.

“I should get to sleep,” she says, hoping he will not end this the way he always does.

But he says, “ _See you in Paris_. _Can’t wait for our date._ ”

And she slams the communicator shut without saying goodnight, wishing that she hadn’t spent nineteen years with her emotions knotted into tight packages of control, because Gar is too good at making her lose it.

* * *

March thirteenth. Paris, overturned with rubble and sirens, is not happening, has not happened, will not happen because she thinks something happened to Gar when she was trapped between dimensions with Psimon. When their comms rained sparks and final silences, when Dick went missing, when the war felt like a lost cause.

She watches him, in the hotel they are staying at, in the seven days since it finally ended. A week to stitch up the broken lines of communication and answer questions. The authorities are pale-faced and white-knuckled, writing out the paperwork for an entire Brotherhood in jail, and she sits in on one of the hearings. Listens to the judiciary system fall into place and thinks she is in the wrong field of work.

Gar has a shadow behind his eyes now, grief stuffed into the cracks of half-healed scars, and sometimes when he starts to laugh, when Raven finds herself staring, his face goes hollow and dead. As if he is going through the motions of being okay, and Raven has to sit on her fingers to keep from asking if he is okay.

Because everyone knows he is not.

She walks past a patisserie and stares far too long at the splintered glass where someone crashed into it, the way the pink light plays across the jagged lines, wondering if Gar knows it is here. Half a block down from their hotel. And maybe she jangles the door open, sits at the counter with a hot mug of espresso, and wishes that he was here in the familiar way.

Sometimes, in the seven days since it finally ended, Kori and Dick are quiet with her on the roofs of Paris. They could talk about the numbness of not knowing when or how they almost lost, but Dick is bitter, and Raven is tired of feeling.

“I thought you were dead,” Kori says, and they are not sure who she is talking to. A week ago, she probably meant them both. A week ago, they might have been.

Vic and Gar are inseparable. They disappear too often, lost to wanderlust and flower shops, long boulevards roped off with orange tape. As they duck around the corner again, away from her and their tiny found family, she hopes that Vic is able to help Gar in a way she can’t. In the seven days since it finally ended, he has not talked to her. Not since he roped into her wiry arms, smelling like pine needles and old leaves, and whispered the quietest confession.

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

If Raven had been more awake, less overwhelmed by the kiss of everyone’s emotions at the back of her neck, she might have said something back. Instead, she pushed him away, clawed out of his hug because he seemed different, somehow.

He has seemed different for a while, she thinks, as she walks into the patisserie again. Too late on a Tuesday night, the weather brisk, the servers nodding acknowledgement because she has been inhabiting this counter all week, blue cloak wrapped tight around her exhausted shoulders. Waiting for Gar to walk in.

“Chamomile,” she murmurs to the cashier, sliding out one of the gift cards that Dick gave her, that Paris gave the team to say thank you.

He has seemed different ever since Trigon. Or maybe ever since he introduced them to his old family, the one that he chose to say goodbye to. And Raven doesn’t pretend to understand the ways in which Gar’s mind works, but she has noticed the softness with which he smiles at her. The unerring consistency with which he asks if she is okay, when she misses dinner, when she forgets to meditate.

And she has noticed that he called her, most nights for most of three months, to talk.

“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” a voice hums in her ear, and she flinches instinctively. Her fingers are jumping with magic.

“Azar.”

“Easy, Rae,” Gar says, sliding one of his hands over the crackles of her staticky knuckles, and she stares at that for a long time. He didn’t even hesitate. “It’s me.”

“Forgot what you look like. You’re never at the hotel.” It is not supposed to be accusatory, but she can’t keep the sour out of her voice. Can’t stop herself from remembering how he was there, consistently continents away, trying to keep her company. And now that they can see each other without the blue light of a screen between them, he has spent seven days ignoring her.

“Cy and I were exploring. You miss me?”

“No.”

“Espresso,” he tells the cashier behind the counter, head tilted ever so slightly toward Raven, his glove hand still pressed over hers in that overly intimate way.

“It’s late for coffee.”

“Haven’t had access to my stimulants for a few months,” he shoots back, and of course this is him self-medicating. “I know it’s not a substitute, but the caffeine helps. You okay? Your vibe is off.”

“My vibe.”

“Yeah. You’re all tense. And your magic is leaking.”

“I’m fine.”

“Merriam-Webster,” he reminds her, and he slides into the tall barstool beside her, cross-legged because the animals in him like to perch. “You’re not fine.”

The barista slides the espresso over the cool granite into Gar’s free hand, and Raven watches him hold it beneath his nose. Green eyes pinned against her. Before, when she held her communicator over her head while sprawled out in a sleeping bag and tent in the wilderness of the Swiss Alps, Raven liked the familiarity of his voice. Now it’s too loud, too deep, too close to reality.

They keep staring at each other, Gar far more patient than she remembers. Far too comfortable in this silence when she needs him to talk like he has been talking for the last three months. Except he looks at her expectantly. Waiting for what, she does not know.

If she looks around, instead of sinking into familiar green, there is no one else in this patisserie, no one but the cashier and the barista, who left for the back room two minutes ago. Occasionally she hears the swell of French in the background, the echo of old laughter and sleep-deprivation. The cracked glass of the window behind them glints with silver moonlight and survival shards.

“Is this a date?” she asks, far too loud to be casual.

Gar lets go of her hand. Leans back into his barstool with a thoughtful look on his face, and she can’t decipher his emotions. She’s never been able to because his mental walls are ten feet of steel and ten years of training. She thinks Mento must have made him practice, all those years that Gar lived with the Doom Patrol, and she hopes it wasn’t scarring.

“Do you…want it to be a date?”

She stiffens her shoulders and drops her nose to the mug of tea between her fists. “Back in January. When I was in Berlin. I said I’d buy you tea, and you said, ‘it’s a date.’”

“I know,” he says, and she knows his voice better than his expressions. Can hear the cautious hopefulness. “I remember. I just thought, based on the way you hung up every time I said it, that you didn’t want to go on a date with me.”

If that isn’t everything in a nutshell. But she is still here, too late on a Tuesday evening, drinking tea bought on a gift card, relieved that Gar showed up. “I don’t understand what you want from me.”

“I don’t—” His voice cracks.

“You don’t what?”

“I don’t want to pressure you into anything.”

“Pressure me into _what_.”

He leans forward in a sudden gust of breath, taps a gloved finger once against her thumb, his mental walls dropping off into unexpected _everything._ She has never felt his mind before. Her lungs stutter at the flush of hot sunshine and thick mist, salty sweat, the low rumble of jungle cats crouched in caves next to insect buzzes and butterfly flaps. Inside a kingdom of instincts and desperation, and his voice is flooded with unjustified certainty.

“I like you.”

Her derisive snort catches in her throat.

“It’s okay if you’re not interested. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

In nineteen years of life, she has never known love in this subcategory. She doesn’t know what to do with it, doesn’t know why it feels like golden showers and home in Gar’s mind. “I’m not…not interested _,_ ” she gasps, more honest than she wants to admit.

She doesn’t expect his thoughts to wince, louder than his face, or for his mental walls to slam back into place. She doesn’t like the sudden quiet.

“Ah.”

“It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s…”

“It’s too new.” He nods. “I thought it might be.”

“I haven’t liked anyone since...”

“Right.”

“I’m not…ready.”

He smiles, but it looks like heartbreak. “That’s okay. We don’t have to be more than friends. We can just be…”

“I like where we are.”

“I know. I like where we are too.”

She has a sharp surge of anger, which isn’t fair, it’s not, but she hates that he has to complicate something so _good._ Something that she is content to hold on to forever, and for someone who spent eighteen years waiting to die, she is not used to wanting things. “Then why would you ask me on a date?”

“Hope?” He shrugs, too casual to be real. “I didn’t want to regret not trying.”

“I don’t know how to date or…be in a relationship. I don’t…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“I don’t want you to wait on me.”

His eyes are greener than the jungle of his mind, which she misses. “Okay.”

“Even if I do…reciprocate. Later.”

“Give me some credit, Rae. I wouldn’t be that selfish.”

He says _selfish,_ as though she is not the one complicating things. As if she is not the one too young, too inexperienced, to love. To even try to love. Turning back to her chamomile, Raven takes a sip and peers at the silence between them, waiting for it to slip into awkward.

It doesn’t, even when he goes out of his way to avoid brushing her hand, even when the cashier comes back and asks who is paying, even when she thinks that Gar is too good to ever love someone like her.

“I missed you,” she finally says, after two hours of murmuring the stories they made before the final battle in Paris, because she regrets lying when he asked.

“Yeah. Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Look. Look. Gar and Raven need a little bit of time to mature. Raven is still getting a handle on all of the emotions she spent her entire life repressing, and Gar is reeling from the events of "no man is an island" and the war. But their friendship is sweet, and good, and familiar, and that’s all they really need to feel better.
> 
> Also posted this earlier than I meant to because I finally figured out how to attach my art files.


End file.
